Yeah but you only ever need to roll a few of them at a time, max. You can get away with having just one, or re-rolling a d6 that comes up as 5 or 6. You don't get crits with d4s so the re-rolls really wouldn't be that big of a deal.

I'm not talking about the d4 deciding if the guys are worth sacrificing - even a chicken is worth tossing under a bus for an extra +1. It's about players getting maximum return for their choices - an actually competent minifig being worth more than a shitty little mook or spider just seems to make sense, and I wouldn't want to place restrictions on players for being able to sacrifice fewer things.

The problem: everybody keeps using their Heroes to give speeches to give "inspiration" to other troops so that the troops can do all the combat while the Hero sits around doing nothing.

Perhaps, you could just remove the benefit of the inspirational speeches. Seems a bit simpler, If the goal is to get the Hero to fight. Why should the minifigs care what he has to say? He's not special, the gods just randomly gave him some cool shit.

To me, it would seem really weird to have a leader be separate from a hero;

the banner/holy relic idea seems feasible, as does "this unit is drunk on maniac beer" or "eat pizza", so they get + bonuses, but having a leader that gives plusbonuses by giving speeches seems like... dirty. I didn't really like it when heroes were doing it, and it sounds particularly bad when there's a specialized unit for it.

How I would do this; is similar to an almighty Benny. Just an almighty benny that effects everyone in your army all at once for a certain task. Your opponent gives it to you if even -he- is inspired by whatever the fuck you just did (or because it will speed up gameplay significantly).

That way you don't just get inspiration bonuses every turn. You know.. like it should be a special thing that happens only under special circumstances. your units aren't just going to constantly be inspired.

Maybe a way you could incorporate a leader could be through the master/thrall idea-set, whereby an inspiring speech could convert nearby civilians or animals to help you out. That is; until the leader is killed or otherwise critfails his rolls. That one makes a lot more sense to me from an in-game standpoint, and actually adds something interesting.

But how does adding a leader unit help to give you the opportunity to create a memorable event from the game? A leader by definition is a person that organizes or commands. That does not sound very funny, or chaotic. To me it looks like adding another layer of complexity that does not help to achieve the primary goal of the game.

Why would Minifigs need a leader to follow? Is their desire for violence, and fear of boring the human overlords not motivation enough?

Ragnar wrote:But how does adding a leader unit help to give you the opportunity to create a memorable event from the game? A leader by definition is a person that organizes or commands. That does not sound very funny, or chaotic. To me it looks like adding another layer of complexity that does not help to achieve the primary goal of the game.

Why would Minifigs need a leader to follow? Is their desire for violence, and fear of boring the human overlords not motivation enough?

There's the Scapegoating idea further up in the thread that I rather like, and also the once-per-battle Epic Speech idea from the BW2010 Feedback thread. Either of these are the kind of inspirations that make Leaders memorable rather than micromanagey.

In fact I might take the Epic Speech and turn it into a "Yes, But" mechanic. The Leader player makes a quick impassioned speech, declares the bonus from the speech, and his opponent or opponents agree on an equivalent penalty. And then he's stuck with that for the rest of the battle.

Natalya wrote:What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of how banned you are.